Dayna Bateman is a recovering tech worker (MSc, HCI) and an emerging writer. Her work has appeared in trade publications like Internet Retailing and literary journals like The American Literary Review.
About me and my work
I received the 2025 ALR Essay Prize for my essay Deracination, Or How to Disappear, which interrogates the decision of my Indigenous Sámi ancestors to pass for White in the racial climate of 1880s America. An alum of the Tin House, Kenyon, and Granta Memoir Workshops, I was awarded a Storyknife Residency on the strength and promise of my memoir-in-progress.
Projects in flight
I am seeking representation for my memoir Hustling Vinyl, about growing up on the spinning edge of the vinyl record business.
Reading Now
It has been said that reading is inhaling and writing is exhaling. Here’s what I’m reading now or just put down.
Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio by Tom Lewis
Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers, edited by Elissa Washuta and Theresa Warburton
Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction by Charles Baxter
The Dark Interval: Letters on Loss, Grief, and Transformation by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Ulrich Baer
I Heard There Was a Secret Chord Music as Medicine by Daniel J. Levitin
Art & Energy: How Culture Changes by Barry Lord